Tung advocates extra container terminals in Hong Kong
Tung Chee Hwa, the head of the Hong Kong government and a former shipowner, told the region’s legislative council today that Hong Kong needs additional container terminals.
In a broad policy address, Tung noted that, for maritime transport, the remaining four berths of Container Terminal 9 will come on stream in 2004 and 2005.
“In order to raise our competitiveness in the long term, we will recommend building more container terminals,” he said.
Tung said that the new container terminals may be built on Lantau island, west of Kowloon. Until now, Hong Kong’s box terminals have been concentrated in the Kwai Chung area.
“The landing point for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge will be on northwest Lantau,” Tung noted. “In future, Lantau will not only have modern transport facilities, but also a value-added logistics park and tourist attractions such as Hong Kong Disneyland.,” he added.
The Hong Kong government will establish a Lantau Economic and Infrastructural Development Coordination Task Force to coordinate the planning and development of these projects.
Commenting on air transport, Tung said: “We will fully exploit the advantages of the Hong Kong international airport by progressively liberalizing our air services regime and actively exploring ways to strengthen our competitiveness.”
He added that the need and urgency for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge has been confirmed, and a coordination group with representatives from the three governments has begun advance work for the project.
Planning work for the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong express rail link is also proceeding, Tung said.
The Hong Kong government plans to continue to add more facilities and adopt new technologies to ease the movement of goods at border crossings. The government is also preparing for the launch of a “Digital Trade Transportation Network System” next year.